rapturerebornmmorpgfandomcom-20200216-history
Part 57
Sitemap --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - More interesting items/ideas for a BioShock Rapture MMORPG --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - Part 57 --- --- --- SO Fontaine never Spliced while he was building his Empire... : He uses thug methods to coerce his 'employees', He rules thru fear/murder, etc... And he starts employing Splicers to institute violence, building his 'army' ... NEVER SHOWN/HINTED AT : How long before some unstable half-crazy/irrational Splicer minion (immune to adequate fear) decides HE'S gonna be the big boss, and Fontaine's head is suddenly Incinerated to a crispy mess, or Fontaine gets a shotgun blast to the face or in the back?? ADAM is a sword that cuts both ways... --- None of the Toilets in Rapture had TP Dispensers ??? : Rather un-hygienic, though this might be a case of 'bring your own', like in non-US parts of the world, though you might have expected a overpriced Vending machine then to take care of people who forgot. But then, there are none (toilet paper rollers) in the ritzy private apartments either (does this indicate some amazing technical innovation ?? Or a 'Plasmid' to handle this issue ?? ... Heh.) Possibly its some new 'high tech' toilet technology (early enough in the City's history to have them all TP-less even in Fontaine's flophouses ???)? All will be explained in the MMORPG (one way or another). --- What happens when Rapture is Exposed/Available to a Surface Government? Ever hear of something called 'The Cold War' ? It might not be that the US government wants to take Rapture for themselves (the technology's many uses probably would be a good reason to though), but to keep it from falling into the hands of the other side. Other governments would possibly also want it, as might various criminal groups and even certain industrialists who would see the ADAM thing as their future super-fortune. There is very good reason why Andrew Ryan doesn't want any more contact with the Surface, as it would bring the Surface 'parasites' to Rapture. Remember the Hydrogen Bombs developed in the 50s? News of that would have been known, and no doubt would lend additional weight to Ryan's "Keep the Surface out" message and conviction. --- Some Splicers are/were too far gone for The Cure : Too much of their brains are gone, wiping out memories ( and no, the Quantum Entanglement stuff does not bring people's minds back after the tissue is destroyed/scrambled). The brain tissue CAN be regenerated (they are experimenting with stem-cell therapies even today), but it will be empty - a tabula rosa. Should they be warehoused for future medical developments or healed and Retaught/Retrained for something useful now ? New Rapture faces that dilemma. And it was accelerating with more and more Ex-Splicers entering the population. Any intact thinking processes remaining can spread back into restored tissue (varies case-by-case by the extent and type of damage). But they (their minds) are often incomplete and require alot of work/exercising/retraining to reinforce the patterns. One type of therapy was to use a derivative of Brain Boost to help speed the relearning process, and then finish the complete Cure removing all the ADAM influences, but leaving the mental rebuilding done on the patient. Audio-visual session would be used as part of the training stimulus. "But Delta was brought back from nothing, except some DNA" ?? -- Not really The First successful Alpha model 'Delta' had been heavily neural recorded (N-grams), so that his conditioning could be mapped and monitored (after the costly/messy failures of Alpha-Beta-Gamma). That data was found and used by Eleanor Lamb to regenerate Delta. Physically from the DNA for the body, and N-grams for the mind. Very few subjects were recorded that way and certainly not the majority of people in Rapture. Even so, it is debatable how much of the original personality was present. Actually, a likely story is that Delta's body wasn't just left there to rot but was picked up by the Big Daddy program's personnel to investigate what went wrong (that program was still in testing phase). And Delta's remains could have been put into storage, for Eleanor to find later. --- Art Deco Plasmid Container (Tonics too) : I wonder what the Rapture Redemption Value (RRV) would be for that fancy container ??? Maybe we should be seeing them used as decorations on tables - vases, light fixtures etc... Used by Splicers/Player in the MMORPG as a decoy (filled with some of that Bio-luminescent red syrup) - HMMMM that's an interesting product idea - glowing food products.... (but without the badness of products like 'Radium Water' marketed back in 20s/30's as a 'health' tonic) --- --- --- The Family and Lamb controlled all of Rapture -- NOT : Consider Minerva's Den just as one example. That is an 'area' of Rapture she obviously DID NOT control. The Minervas Den levels are about 1/4 the size of everything we saw in BS2. And MD controls more than that to get all their needed supplies from. How much of the rest of Rapture could be similar ?? Clearly, Sophia Lamb and 'the Family' DID NOT control ALL of Rapture. Again, we only saw a tiny bit of Rapture in BS2 -- a Southern corner of it, and alot of that is actually pretty marginal parts of Old Rapture at that. We saw very few connections going to any other parts of Rapture. You cannot go by what Audio Diary Recordings say, as they are of limited or biased perspective/opinion and NOT valid narration of the whole story. Sophia Lamb for example can say whatever she wants, but it clearly illustrated how deluded and manipulative she was. --- Disconcerting Twitching of corpses (BS1, long after they are dead): I find myself wanting to whack them with the wrench until they stop moving (to make sure they are dead - got surprised by Splicers 'playing dead' more than once...), but it doesn't seem to help. Some odd effect of ADAM ? In the real world fingernails and hair keep growing for years after a person is dead. This unstable stem cell stuff might just keep the bodies a little more active than they should be (but 'cells' use food (sugars) and Oxygen and that flow cease on being 'deceased' (unless the corpse is somehow res-pirating independently and dissolving tissue for 'life force' sustenance). Heh. They actually blew it. They coulda turned a game 'bug' into a 'feature' and have them (corpses) twitch and also periodically make odd sounds (gurgling and such) that would add an additional creepy element to the game. Having them 'come back to life', once in a while might have kept the Players more on their toes (even if its just reaching out to try to grab the Player instead of standing up and dancing a jig. --- Replaying thru Bioshock 1 again - Rapture isn't quite the near ghost town the game presents : Listen to the Public Announcements - Go to the Football Game... Go Shopping... Don't Splice too fast.. Visit Arcadia or Fort Frolic, etc.. It seems more a case of some hyped-up freak from the Surface is killing his way across Rapture - There's a Bounty of 1000 ADAM, but everyone not interested/daunted by this should stay out of the way. Ryan doesn't want to lose more population, now that Atlas is all but nullified, so Citizens have largely vacated the places you go thru. (BTW if 'pheromone' control has turned Splicers into slaves with no free will then why have to offer a 1000 ADAM bounty ????? Why have to tell them to resume your normal life to 'keep the bastards (Atlas) from winning' ???) At some point, if Ryan wasn't interested in turning you (Jack) against Fontaine/Atlas (he's already figured it out - see that WYK room ...), Ryan would simply have an overwhelming gang of his remaining Constables with heavy weapons (like fully mod'd machine guns and Grenade Launchers - add a phalanx of Security Bots and a few quickly set up Turrets) then just ambush you and you'd be hamburger in seconds. The game makers were limited by how many NPCs they could have at once active, so no crowd scenes for Jack to blunder into if he suddenly emerged from a Bathysphere somewhere unexpected. So we see few denizens and never very many in view at once. An interesting thing about the MMORPG would be that the entire sequence of the BS1/BS2/etc games could be replayed - this time showing all the things you did NOT see (and to straighten out some of the stupid things the writers didn't care about) : * Ryan actively issuing orders and working his remote controls and marshaling his significant forces. * Ryan listening in on Atlas's radio talk and making comments (or Ryan sending some to Atlas telling him its just a matter of time and HE would have a VERY prominent place on his wall of betrayers). * Rapturians moving away from where the monster Jack was, * Bunches of Splicers bragging about who would kill 'the invader' and get all that sweet ADAM. * Show Ryan's setup of his 'Sting' on Atlas/Fontaine and what happened after he 'died'. * The history of what happened afterward with Ryan being better able to pull strings to keep Rapture alive and to contain the 'other' dangerous cancer down in Persephone. --- --- --- Actually, How Expensive Were the Generic ADAM Products to the People of Rapture ?: This would be even after full consumer production was under way and for the basic ADAM products, instead of premium priced new or deluxe types. If too expensive, then few people could afford it (how much discretionary spending did most people have)? And thus to what extend was it actually used by the majority of the populace?? Small doses that only last for a while ? How much and for what purpose (the game content implies Splicing was useful in actual job and life applications -- or was that just advertising hype?). That would mean repeated use AND cost. The Buried at Sea DLC shows Fontaine as having an awful lot more commercial ventures than in the previous games and depending on the size of the ADAM market it may not have been able to be like that. Even with BaSx not being Canon, Fontaine was shown (in BS1/BS2) as having other ventures, so the issue still exists. * How many actual years of profit making production of ADAM? (Really only profitable once it reached consumer grade production...) * How big a market ? (as the Little Sister situation was a limiting factor for potential volume) * Offset of R&D and other costs -'Brick and Mortar', etc - managing/transporting/selling. No profits, no 'diversification' for Fontaine ...* His fake philanthropy would absorb significant money (though some of that was actually part of overhead costs for raw materials for the ADAM..). Did Fontaine's shoddy charity really cost that much, or even actually help that many people ? More exaggeration for the game plot ? * You also don't just start companies of all those other things from scratch (and it takes know-how and TIME , not just money). With the size of Rapture, 'competition' isn't as easy to get going in such limited markets. If he criminally 'strong armed' owners out of their businesses, how long before he got a shotgun blast to the face by one of his victims? (The writers kinda left that factor out ... would have got in the way of their convenient "Failtopia" plot.) --- Arcadia (Oxygen and Free Admission) As mentioned in the game, there are other people selling oxygen in Rapture (even before Arcadia started to do so linky: Arcadia_and_Oxygen ). Initially there probably was air being pumped from the surface (there are shallower spots and certainly the Lighthouse is there to support the machinery). Once the farms were in operation, they would produce alot of oxygen and more important scrub the CO2 out of the air, though they might have actually needed more CO2 than Rapture produced to grow the needed food. Landford's ADAM super-trees would also produce wood - a valuable product - possibly the main product and the oxygen being secondary. The Audio Diaries mention that Arcadia was originally open to the public, but was later closed (Civil War and Saturnine problem ...). How much was charged isn't specified, but consider you have to pay these days to get into a National Park. (Novel - was that Lutz kid kidnapped by Saturnine in Arcadia ??? Tasty blood for their ceremonies or traded to Bootleggers for ADAM ???) If Ryan was going to charge for Oxygen, wouldn't he have done it from the start, ie- 'sweat of your brow"... or was free admission just the loss leader and other things inside would be the profit makers? Is it possible that he opened it (for free) later when the 'closed in' psychosis started affecting citizens (seeing if it would help before trying more expensive measures - Lamb, etc..) Also was the oxygen selling started AFTER they closed Arcadia during the Civil War and now it had to pay for its upkeep ? Vague Accu-Vox recordings hardly answer much of these questions. --- Clever Triggers in 'Choreographed' Scenes : Advantage of 'one time through' Quest/Missions in closed off (created on-the-fly) bubble scenarios - you can do clever 'choreographed' triggering effects you saw (more of in BS1 ?) rather than some much more difficult generalized scripting of behaviors(which is much harder to get right and to work as intended). Developing events can be sequenced and effects played, etc.. with the usual terrain laid out to 'lead' the player through the mini-plot. The generalized NPC AI would help fill in when the Player does something unexpected (as they will). The scenarios still can do widely varying parameterized details (themes/props/spawns/paths) to mix things up a bit/make scenario more unique. (((I have mentioned before that alot of this whole pile of stuff (tools/methodology/reused data) for the MMORPG could also be significantly utilized (as in cutting alot of $$$$ expenses) to improve/make more effective the production of the companies Solo games.))) --- Pheromone Control : Of course how much control is the question. Pheromones chemicals send simple signals, so it would not be something like a command to "attack Atlas". Giving an 'attack' order might have Splicers attack anyone they see (including each other). It would be useful enough just to make Splicers calm (non-aggressive) instead of continuing tearing up Rapture and disrupting whats left of the economy. That would allow Ryan to deprive Atlas of most of his violent mutant army and leave Atlas vulnerable when he was finally tracked down and cornered. (that appeared to be the situation when we show up as Jack). People who didn't use any Plasmids (or use any after the Pheromone system was being instituted) wouldn't be effected. You might also consider that people who abused ADAM probably had already given up alot of their free will (thru the addiction and more the insanity - it was likely what made them so easy for Atlas to manipulate) . After Atlas was dealt with, keeping the Splicers calm/cooperative would be very useful to stabilize the City enough to get basic necessities in production. Ryan then could put his Labs to work on a "Cure" or research to eliminate ADAM's bad side effects. With those possibilities, it makes Ryan's "suicide" very ILLOGICAL. There are signs to be seen - saying for all un-spliced citizens to report -- alluding maybe to Ryan was going to force them all to Splice or come under his power?? WHY would he want MORE crazy people???? It makes much more sense for him to be arming them with weapons, or instituting/organizing civil defense measure to allow them to safely continue working to keep Rapture running and necessary services and production going. THAT makes ALOT more sense. --- And the Rest of the Story (Ryan allegedly going againts his philosophy) : Unfortunately we never hear much in the way of details about whether Fontaine had anyone to come forward to take over control of his companies or if any ever did. There is a similar lack of detail about the activities and timings of seizing and investigating Fontaine's holdings and personnel for connections to his smuggling crimes and other thuggery (that, besides signs of Sullivan being camped out in a major way in Neptunes Bounty in BS1). With the ADAM addiction problem in Rapture, at some point ADAM production had to resume. So is it so strange that sometime later (when?) Fontaine Futuristics was "nationalized", and apparently eventually afterwards being run under control of Ryan's organization (when?). Consider that sometime later mere rumors of an ADAM shortage was enough to set off riots in the population, showing the importance of keeping that industry running and the addicted people under control. Considering what kind of man Fontaine was, having competent lieutenants would be a liability on his life, and his family has been shown to be a sham. What actions Atlas took to interfere with Ryan's work to keep Rapture alive is also not known, though Fontaine (as Atlas) seems to STILL have possessed significant resources to make use of. --- Bioluminescent Lights for Rapture - efficiency issue and limitations : The Bio-lumnescence used for many devices has to be of the 'rechargeable fuel cell' type mechanisms, as the bio-luminescence is organically based, requiring biochemicals to power the biological mechanism. Those biochemicals, like ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), have to be rebuilt from their breakdown chemicals using electricity as the power source and employing some biological process which can convert electricity/electrically produced ions into the required chemical bonds. Competing technologies are incandescent (alot of waste) and fluorescent light sources (no LEDs likely yet) Is this Bio-luminescence mechanism efficient enough for many uses in Rapture? High intensity light requires high energy densities which you wont have in this Bio-chemical mechanism (so no lighting of bright signs out in the murky ocean). Room lighting bright enough to read by - a very big bulb/reflector (again energy densities for that brightness generally a no-go) Ditto for lights needed to grow plants. Somewhat dimmer light uses - control indicators, nightlights, and similar low wattage uses. --- Rapture : Established 1946 (Nov 5 1946) : (Note- not city is NOT 'Finished') probably was laying the keystone(?) ceremony when the first building/City section was completed or operational. Likely the Hotel Monseñor at Welcome Center (so many staff/workers could get out of those crowded construction camps into better accommodations) -- the transportation (Trams/AE Trains) was well enough developed to move workers between City sites by then (and needed to move the huge amounts of construction materials). ^^^ check novel 'fact' Should have a Flashback scene of this portrayed (and documentary footage in B&W for the City Archives) Stanley Poole on his first assignment ??? Various key personnel involved in the constructions and organization present, and with various celebrities (and 'Movers and Shakers') pointed out in the crowd (newsreel footage style - TV styles are just starting at that time). --- --- --- Its a City, There's Garbage : Pneumatic trash system -- those trashcans (some anyway) auto-empty into the basement for haulage to the 'recycling' facility (probably a Sinclair Industries subsidiary). Haulage Tram in basement/sewer level (Chicago had an extensive small-sized underground railroad for hauling ashes/trash from basements and freight delivery at the turn of the century... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company ) Self-cleaning toilets - didn't the displaced 'Tidy-bowlmen' workers make up the majority of Atlas's followers ?? It is a good idea to keep the streets clean of combustibles, as fires from tossed cigarette butts, cigar stubs and matches (and the odd firework) can quickly burn and absorb the available Oxygen (and elevate CO2 levels dangerously), and generate toxics that may not clear swiftly as they generally can be counted upon in the open terrestrial sky. Are citizens required to 'Keep Rapture neat' or get tickets issued for littering ?? Dumping garbage on someone else's property IS imposing on them (the limitation of the 'freedom'), but what about public streets ?? I may have to look that up - for what is expected under 'Objectivism' (where unlike this made-to-order Fail-topia the writers created for BioShock, there ARE allowed laws/ordinances and authorities to enforce them). No doubt paid services will be available to elevate an area above the modicum of cleanliness provided/enforced by the City. Public service announcements on TV channels : "Don't Be a Litter Parasite", "Don't dump Toxic Waste in the Street - that's what the Ocean is for", "Don't deposit Rotting Corpses down the nearest Sewer", "Flush twice, its a long way to Sinclair's Water Recycling Plant"- many of the other classic images/verbiage.... --- --- BS2 - that "Cindy" you can kill/save after defeating Mark Meltzer BD : That might not have been Meltzer's Cindy (any LS usually will do for non-Alpha BDs, and DID you ever expect Sofia Lamb to honor ANY promises she makes ?? ) Or maybe THAT ONE was .... Perhaps they wanted to limit the players personal involvement, about a child who now has a name and identity, rather than just being another nameless dehumanized Little Ghoul which we so easily decide the fate of. DO YOU kill her (even with the green misty stuff, you really should realize what is supposed to take place when you 'Harvest' the LS), or DO you 'Save' her into an as yet uncertain fate (how many of those 'saved' LS actually made it back alive to Tenenbaum ?? or to the Surface world ?) Its much simpler to avoid/ignore such issues, and just not happen to have a 'Cindy' named. The MMORPG would possibly have much more to say about such issues. . . .